


Carry You

by Childishlight



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Childishlight/pseuds/Childishlight
Summary: Frankie disappeared after a mission went bad. More than bad. For weeks, the team tried to find her, without a glimpse of hope.Until she was found, in bad shape.They are there when she opens her eyes in that hospital bed. But none of them are prepared for the repercussions of those weeks of captivity she endured and the horror she lived during that time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!  
> So second fanfic in English, I had this idea a few weeks ago and I decided to act on it. It's gonna be a bit dark, with reference of rape and torture, so if you are sensible to it, I advice you to be careful with it. 
> 
> I still don't know how many chapters this story will have, but a few. We will see as it goes.

‘Where’s Frankie?’

 It’s the first thing he heard when he approached the team at the rendezvous point. It took him a minute to assess the situation, to look around to see that his partner was not nearby. His green eyes, filled with worried, dropped on Jai who stared at him with expectations or something in that matter.

‘We got separated when the building exploded. She told me she’ll meet us there before the comms went off.’ He answered, not too sure of why he felt that sting of fear in his chest.

 Frankie was more than capable of taking care of herself, she was the strongest person he knew. She proved to him times and times again that she needed no one to be okay, but that didn’t change anything for him. He worried for her each time a mission went sideways. This one was a catastrophe. Their target flew away in a chopper, firing RPGs to his safe house while his men shoot at them with machine guns. Two against a militia. It was bound to fail as soon as they entered the building; yet he never thought it would be that terrible.

‘She’s still in there?’ There was something in Standish voice, somewhat sharper than usual, his eyes still on the black smoke that rose to the sky. They could smell it from here, the odour of burnt skin, something sickening that Will tried to ignore.

‘I don’t think so. She was closer to the exit than I was.’

He could read in Susan’s eye the fear that shone there, and he knew the same one was legible in his own. He wanted to say something hopeful, but the sound of shouting in a foreign language behind the trees makes him rethink.  

‘We can’t stay here. They’ll find us. We need to go, for what we know, she may be waiting for us at the safe house. If not, we send a search party.’

They all wanted to argue, but nobody did. Will was right, they couldn’t stay here while the bad guys were looking for us. They needed to move; they were no help to Frankie if they were dead.

 

* * *

 

‘Tell me again.’

Will let out a sigh as he met Jai’s eyes. The Indian man made him repeat the same story so many times in the last few weeks that Will wanted to punch him in the face, but he understood. Three weeks. It’s been three weeks since that mission, since Frankie went missing. They didn’t have a sign from her, the search party didn’t find anything in that building, or what was left of it. She was gone, nowhere to be found. What scared him the most was that she didn’t try to contact us by any means. Jai said it was something she has done before, going away after a mission went sideways, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to make it right. None of them thought it was the case now. Frankie had changed in the last few months with them, she was more open, a team player, she wasn’t entirely that lone wolf that doesn’t do attachments anymore.

So, they tried to chase away the worst-case scenario, trying to find her anyway.

‘I told you a thousand times, Jai.’

‘Maybe you missed something. A detail.’

Will knew it was Jai’s ways to cope with the absence of his best friend, he couldn’t be mad at him for that. Still, he knew it wasn’t helping. They did everything they could for now, they went back, searching for her, they looked at cameras near the area in hope to find something … she just vanished into thin air. Ray tried everything the bureau allowed him to do in that case, he reached for the CIA, send teams for days, turning each stone, but it wasn’t conclusive. Nothing was.

For the moment, Standish and Ray were sitting a few feet away from them, trying to find Cassius Dovydas, their initial target the night Frankie disappeared. Dovydas was known for his cybercrime, hacking Latvian national defences to control drones, killing thousands of innocents. The kind of man who was better behind bars than in liberty, especially when they figured out he had a foothold in politics.

For a few minutes, Will watched Susan trying to calm the argument between Standish and Ray, her hand resting on the field agent's shoulder.

‘We all want to find her guys, but screaming at each other won’t help, just like repeated the same things over and over again is useless,’ she said, and they could hear the tiredness in her voice. She let her hand drop from Ray’s shoulder after a while and Will took a mental note to ask her a few questions about it later.

‘Guys? I found something.’ They were all around Standish before he could finish his sentence. ‘The Latvian authorities have found someone on the banks of the Misa River. Woman, mid-thirties, brown hair…’

‘The description matches Frankie’s’

‘They transferred her to Riga…’ added Standish reading the rest of the text before trying to hack the Riga East Clinical University Hospital system to have more information. Next to him, Ray was already working on arrangements for the team to go back to Latvia.

‘Someone understand Latvian?’ Will already knew the answer before he asked the question, but he wanted to know what those strange words about that woman who may be Frankie meant. Only the silence answered him as apprehension grew in him like a virus ready to ravage each of his organs.

‘I’m sure she’s fine’

And yet, there was no assurance in Jai’s voice.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

It was the longest flight he has ever experienced. He couldn’t fall asleep to pass the time, his brain never stopped long enough to let him rest. Will constantly imagine the worst-case scenarios even if he tried not to. He envied Standish who fell asleep twenty minutes after the flight took off. The younger man’s head was resting on Jai’s shoulder, his neck in a weird angle. To Will’s surprise, Jai didn’t move or pushed him away, he was so absorbed in his thinking that he didn’t seem to realize the intimate contact. Jai was reserved, not talking much, keeping everything for himself, it took him long enough to open to them, and Will knew that we will never share the same bound with him as the one that Frankie has. He knew that the other man was suffering from his friend’s absence, even without a word or a discussion about it.

Ray was reading a file, not too far away from Will, biting his nail was his eyes went from a word to word. It was something about Latvia or the last mission they did with Frankie, he was sure of it. At this point, Ray knew every detail of that mission and Whiskey believed that his former best friend felt guilty about how things turned out, he was the one who sent them on that mission. Will didn’t share his point of view. He wanted to say something to him, but he didn’t want to wake up Susan who felt asleep a few minutes ago between them. She was snuggled against Ray, her head resting against his shoulder and her hand lying negligently on his forearm. Will has questions about these two, if Susan was more open with Ray lately and often took his defence, their relationship seemed different since Frankie’s disappearance.   

‘She would have contact us if she could have.’ Will turned his head to look back at Ray, the other man talking to himself, in a low voice, being careful not to wake up Susan.

‘I agree’ Jai whispered in return, barely audible under the noise of the aircraft engines.

‘She’s fine,’ he heard himself say in the same low voice, with a tone that could convince anyone with a brain that he believed what he just said.

‘Yeah…’ His former best friend dropped the file on his lap, his now free hand pushing a strand of hair away from Susan’s face. His voice no more convincing than his.

Jai stayed silent this time, but Will knew what he was thinking. The same thoughts were playing in his own head.

 

* * *

 

The sky is grey when they arrived at the hospital, making they way to the ICU. Ray was the first to flash his fake badge to a nurse, letting her read his name and associate the logo with the name under it.

‘Special Agent Danvers, we are here about that woman found yesterday. We have some reasons to think she’s an American citizen.’ The lies flew easily as he spoke, hiding their true identities. Will knew he had reasons to, Ray wasn’t that clueless, and they all knew the chances Frankie wasn’t safe here.

The nurse replied in a broken English, so hard for Will to understand that she was already gone when he understood where she was going. It took a few minutes, too much time for Will’s liking as he paced in the waiting room. He heard Standish making a comment on how hungry he was, but the younger man didn’t move to go on a food hunt, he just sat on one of the chairs, folding his arms on his chest, looking at the ground.

Will felt Susan’s hand on his arm as he passed close to her, making him stop pacing with impatience. He wanted to tell her something, but didn’t have the time to figure out what, a voice with a thick accent making itself heard behind him.

‘Agent Danvers? I’m Doctor Alksnis, the doctor treating the Jane Doe found near de Misa River.’ She shook Ray’s hand, a faint smile on her lips.

‘Thank you for meeting us.’

‘I’ve heard that you have reasons to think she’s American?’

’My wife and I were on a vacation a few weeks back. ’ Will heard himself say and by the expression on Jai’s face, he knew that was what was planned in their cover. ‘We were supposed to go back home the same day, but she lost her passport. She insisted that I go home, my mom is sick, you see, and she’ll catch up with me as soon as she went to the embassy. She never got back.’

 The doctor nodded slowly, compassion on her face and Will had to swallow the lump in his throat. This was a nightmare, a living one and he wanted to run away from it.

‘We have reasons to think that your Jane Doe is Mrs Chase.’ Ray’s voice was cold, professional, far from the voice he had a little bit earlier in the plane.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Doctor Alksnis, before asking them to follow her.

The room is small, so small that Will could feel Standish breath on the back of his neck. On one side of the room, a big window with curtains drawn. The FBI agent felt a cold hand grip his heart.

‘You have to prepare yourself. She suffers from several injuries; she has a few broken fingers and ribs. One of her lung collapses, there is water in her lungs … and her collarbone is in a bad shape, we’ll have to repair it by surgery when she’s more stable. Cuts, burns, bruises … she also suffers from hypothermia and a concussion. ‘The doctor’s voice is one that is used to announce bad news.’There are signs that she was detained against her will’

  
He felt sick, his heart beating too hard, his hands shaking, wondering who could do that to Frankie. Susan slipped her hand in his, trying to be strong for him, to tell him without a word that it would be okay. Frankie was strong and yet; they didn’t have confirmation that it was her.

‘We also noted traces of sexual assault.’

Those words, those two words was enough for him to lose contact with reality. He heard Susan’s sob as she squeezed his hand a little more, but he didn’t understand Ray’s question and the answer that was given… He just wanted to see her, to hold her, to protect her.

He failed.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I feel bad now. But she's gonna be okay, she will... 
> 
> Just not now...


	3. Chapter 3

She seemed so fragile, lying there, connected to machines and tubes whose utility he didn’t understand. She wasn’t the warrior he learned to know little by little. Right now, she wasn’t the woman who fought with everything she has to save others, the woman so strong and confident he never knew she might be that vulnerable. She looked small in this bed; her skin so pale that the dark ecchymoses on her face appeared as black as a night without stars. He wanted to touch her, but his fingers didn’t want to move, not wanting to press against the bruises and the cuts. She was asleep, so peaceful in her medicated sleep. The doctor told him that they kept her unconscious, because of the pain mostly but also because she was disoriented and agitated. Will could understand why. She fought for her life, escaped her captors and tried to run away from them as much as she could with all her wounds. Frankie was a fighter, the kind of person who is constantly fighting for their survival, even when the situation didn’t need to be fought. Will felt tears burning is eyelids, tears of rage, of distress and helplessness.  

Under the raw light of the neon lights, the silhouette remained motionless, statue of salt in a tumultuous ocean, unaware of the images played out in Will’s hyperactive imagination. He tried to understand how someone could do that to her. They marked her body, creating new scars on her skin, drawing blue and black arabesques on her body. More than anything, he feared the invisible damages, the indelible traces of the violence in her mind.  He knew that such violence, such a traumatic event can only leave havoc in someone’s mind, even in someone as strong as Frankie.

“Ray’s talking to the police officers who found her,” he heard Susan’s say in a low voice and he knew she feared waking up Frankie, even though there wasn’t a chance to do so.

He nodded slowly, letting her know he heard her, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say, how to express is feeling. It was new for him, him who always felt everything so deeply and was able to process it and speak about it. Now, he couldn’t find the words to say how he felt. A sigh escaped his lips and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to calm the beating of his heart.

 “How could I let this happen?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

That, he knew. He couldn’t protect her, he tried so many times, but Frankie never let him. She pushed him away, she tried to prove him, again and again that she didn’t need him, she wasn’t Gigi or Emma. She was something else. Sure, he wanted to shelter Gigi because of her innocence, he wanted to shield Emma from the danger of her work, but Frankie? He wanted to protect her from herself, from the solitude she seemed to get lost in, from her relentlessness and her tendencies to put herself in danger. He needed to shelter her from everything, from everyone. She never let him do it, too proud, too stubborn, refusing to let him close enough. Will understand Jai’s protectiveness towards his friend, he felt the same, even if he knew that the reasons were different.  

“I know, it’s just that…” his voice remained stuck in his throat, the words dying on his lips.

“It’s hard to see the person you love suffer,” the words fled from Susan’s lips and as soon as she pronounced them, Will darted his eyes on her, shocked, confused.

“I don’t…”

“Don’t deny it, it’s useless. I know. We all know except for you two, which is a bit infuriating if you ask me.”

He stayed silent, his mind blank as she spoke, trying to say something that would be meaningful. He couldn’t think of something, maybe because Susan was right, he did have feelings for Frankie, feelings that weren’t platonic on the contrary. He chose something else instead, dodging the subject with something that bothered him a little bit in the last weeks.

“Is that what you feel for Ray?” He asked quietly, his eyes still on Frankie as if he was waiting for her to open those green eyes of hers to look at him.  

“Yeah, he does infuriate me sometime.”

Susan knew it wasn’t the question, but it wasn’t a lie either. Her relationship with Ray was complicated, something she wasn’t sure she could qualify as healthy, but she learned in the past weeks that she couldn’t stay away from him too long for some reason she ignored.

“It’s not what I meant.”

“What you meant is to change the subject because you don’t want to talk about your relationship with Frankie. You know you’ll have to deal with how you feel about her sooner than later, because when she’ll wake up, I doubt she’ll be the Frankie we know. Those kind of thing does change someone and not always in the way we expect.”

Susan knew better than to expect an answer from him. Will knew she was right; he knew that the psychologist just did her job with him as she always does. She knew him too well. She lifted her hand, squeezing his shoulder gently in comfort, knowing that sit was useless to say something else. He needed time to process.

“How bad you think it will be when she wakes up?” he finally asked after a moment, trying to prepare himself.

“There is only way to find out,” wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he knew she couldn’t say something else; she didn’t know either.

  They were in uncharted territories...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fanfiction has a slower pace than I expected, I hope you'll enjoy it anyway!


	4. Chapter 4

The days passed, lazily, punctuated by the noise of machines connected to the inanimate body which seemed to heal with slowness as annoying as time. He didn’t leave her, refusing to leave her alone in this room where the murmurs are in a singing and unknown language, where silence cuts like a knife. The rare moments when he had to come out of the room to sleep or shower, he made sure that Susan or Jai was with her. In this suffocating silence, he tried not to imagine what had been done to his partner, the horrors she had to endure because he could not protect her. Guilt nibbled him alive, burning and heavy in his chest, and no matter what Susan said, it didn’t faint. He knew he wasn’t the only one to feel that way. He could see the clouds in Jai’s eyes when he looked at Frankie, the way he refused to talk to them about it, how he repelled Standish’s attempts to make him talk. Even Ray was quieter, relentlessly reading the local police more than thin files of Frankie’s case.

In the last few days, Frankie had surgery so often that he didn’t want to count the time he spent in that waiting room. They repaired her collarbone, treated her collapse lung and other injuries that needed more intentions. The kept her under for a week, giving her time to heal until they told him they slowly decreased the doses of drugs in her system. There were no changes, she always seemed asleep, peaceful, unaware of the pain that awaited her. He didn’t notice it at first; the light, barely perceptive movement of her fingers against the white sheets. She did three times before his eyes caught it and he reached of her hand, being careful not to hurt her broken fingers.

‘Good Morning Sleeping Beauty,’ he whispered to her as her eyes fluttered open.

‘Dork.’ Her voice was weak and breathy, so weak that he had to read it on her lips. He gently pressed his fingers into her palm, trying to swallow the tears that were forming in the corner of his eyes.

‘How do you feel?’

He could see she was struggling to stay awake, to answer him. The drugs still heavy in her system, numbing the pain for a little while longer. She closed her eyes again and for a second, Will believed she fell asleep again.

‘Like I was hit by a train…’

So not too good then. He wanted to ask her if she remembered something but didn’t dare, he feared the answer. He just nodded, hoping that the memories of her captivity were far away from her barely conscious mind. She tried to move, but he was faster than she, putting a soft hand on her shoulder to stop her in her movement.

‘Don’t move, Franks. You haven’t been hit by a train, but you have injuries. Stay calm, will you? I’ll get the doctor.’

She didn’t answer, her eyes closing already, her body refusing to cooperate a little longer. She had returned into Morpheus arms before he could reach the door.   

 

* * *

 

‘She seemed okay. I mean, considering the circumstances.’

He was back to the waiting room while the doctors were examining Frankie. He couldn’t chase the hope in his chest at the fact that she was awake, even briefly. He was waiting for her to open her eyes for a week now, without any signs of life from her except the little waves created by her heartbeat on a screen. Will wanted her to be okay, more than anything. He wanted her to be back on her feet and to kick his butt, to playfully chat with him after work like nothing happened. Susan knew that, that’s why she didn’t believe it. Frankie wasn’t okay, not after everything that happened to her. Instead, she believed that her friend was confused, numb by the drugs they gave her. She dreaded the moment when reality was going to catch her snapping her up with the force of a truck hitting a deer. The psychologist knew that nothing could protect Frankie from that, even Will sweetness or Jai’s care. They were useless against the monsters that will come for her when her mind is more alert, and she hated the idea of being helpless in front of the trauma of her best friend.  

‘I don’t believe she is.’

All eyes turned toward the Indian man, who had been so silent in the last days that his murmur sounded like a cry of distress. His words were followed by silence filled with the heaviness as he was expected to continue is explanation.

‘I know her. I know she’s going to pretend that nothing happened that everything’s fine until she breaks. When she does, she will push us away, closing in on herself until nothing else touches her anymore.’

Jai’s words echoed for a long time in the room, filling Will’s heart with a cold fear, a feeling of stifling under the weight of events. They were silent for a moment, each of them knowing how much the words were right, describing Frankie’s character and her way of doing things to perfection. She wasn’t good with emotions, she drowned them quickly under thick layers of ice.

‘But she changed, right?’ Standish voice was hopeful, as he searched an ally in all that darkness that surrounded them so fast, they were prepared for it.

‘I do believe she did, but now, with all of that? We don’t know what happened to her, what she remembers and…’ Susan took a breath, her hand slipping through her hair as she struggled with her words, not liking to call the spy that way; ‘with rape victims, it’s always difficult to predict how they will react, her CIA training prepares for torture to a certain extent, but not to that. Nothing can prepare someone for that.’

Ray’s hand found Susan’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly. She reached for his hand, an unconscious gesture to comfort herself in that situation. If normally it would not go unnoticed as an exchange, no one paid attention to it this time.

‘So … what do we do?’ Standish seemed dejected, overtaken by the event, without resources or landmarks. His facial expression is the reflection of the mental state of his colleagues.

‘We wait and we fight for her, even if she won’t let us do it. We can’t let her push us away, not now. “

The answer seems so easy, but in fact, they know it’ll be a real challenge. Somewhere, Will hoped she would stay in the lethargic state in which she was a few minutes earlier, that way he could preserve her from the pain of having been abused, but he knew we could protect her for that.

Obviously, he was anything but talented to protect his partner.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frankie will be more awake next chapter, we will begin to see how all of that affects her and how the team will help with that !


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I'm sorry for the wait, it is crazy at work right now and I have less time than I'd like to write. 
> 
> Big thank you to mafm for beta free this chapter and for your imput. It's really appreciated! It's a pleasure to work with you.

Her body was sore, aching with a pulsating pain as she breathed. It was the first time she felt it, as the drugs that had kept her largely asleep began dwindling in her system. . It was the pain that pulled her from her sleep, and for the first time in a long time, Frankie really felt awake, really awake. Her eyes fluttered open, slowly, as she tried to push back the headache that pulsed in her skull. She was confused, a little bit lost, as she tried to remember how she got here and what happened to her. The last thing she remembered is running through crispy snow as the cold air burned her lungs, her body wanting to give up on her. She didn’t remember what happened after she reached the banks of the river, it was all black after that, until the moment she woke up in that hospital bed, Will’s voice filling her ears with words she didn’t understand. She remembered everything before that, everything they did to her was still there, haunting her as she lied in bed, and tried to push away the emotions that flood her. She moved slightly, trying to sit up against the pillows, welcoming the physical pain that drowned out the psychological one. At least for now. 

“Hey, easy there.” 

The voice was soft, calm, although it has a familiar authority. Her green eyes met those dark and familiar ones that almost made her want to burst into tears if she wasn’t too proud to do so. Her friend’s face was marked by fatigue and worry, lines drawn on generally jovial and friendly traits. Frankie couldn’t deny the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach, the mixture of relief and guilt, which brought tears to the corners of her eyes. As soon as Susan noticed the water lining her eyelids, she reached out her hand, gently placing it on her arm, taking care not to touch the cuts and other superficial wounds. Frankie recoiled from the touch, her body tensed and fear in her eyes. The psychologist withdrew her hand, avoiding abrupt gestures, cursing herself mentally for being so unaware of the situation. 

“It’s okay, Franks. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”

Susan reflected that she had certainly seen more victims of violence than she would like. Victims of criminals or society, mentally or physically abused, the wounds are alike. It’s different, though, to see that pain, this fear in the eyes of someone as unshakeable as Frankie. It was horrific to wonder what they had done to her. What horrors were committed to have broken such a strong person, especially one who had undergone a training preparing her to endure torture? The thought both broke her heart and nauseated her. Susan did her best to hide her emotions under a mask of compassion, not wanting to put another burden on the other spy’s shoulders. 

“Where are the others?” Her voice was rusty, and she sounded much hoarser than usual. 

“Will and Jai are at the hotel. Ray is still with the officers who found you and Standish disappeared a few hours ago.” She shrugged at that, knowing that the younger member of their team was somewhere trying to find some clues on the traffic footage. 

There was a silence, a bit heavy, extending in length. Susan didn’t want to push Frankie to speak yet, but she paradoxically wanted to know her state of mind. She needed to know more to better intervene, to know how to act, or what to do in the coming weeks. She didn’t care to feel more useless than she had felt since arriving in Latvia.   
“ I know you probably don’t want to take about it, but, we need to know if you remember something that could help us find the people who did this to you” She kept her voice soft and gentle, yet watched Frankie shy away from her, avoiding eye contact at all cost. 

“I never saw their faces. They were constantly masked.” 

She was never very open, not enjoying long discussions about emotions or feelings. She has always known how to repress her feelings to the point of forgetting them, what she wanted to do more than anything now. She hadn’t lied, she had never seen the faces of her attackers, but she knew she wasn’t helping by keeping any details she did recall to herself. She wanted to forget these details, and essentially wanted to repress these events deep in her subconscious and never think about it again. 

“Do you remember anything that could give us a clue about where you were or where you were held?” 

Silence answered Susan. In fact, the lack of a response lasted for so long that Susan feared that Frankie had fallen asleep, except that her breathing was too fast and irregular for that. She gave her more time to think about the answer to the question until she grew worry and spoke again. 

“Frankie?” 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

The answer was predictable, the words familiar. How many times did she hear the spy pronounced them when the subject was inevitably going to Will? Anyway, Susan nodded in an understanding gesture, hiding a trace of disappointment in a faint smile. 

“You should probably rest. The doctor was talking about giving you extra tests later today to make sure you can get home quickly.” 

She also knew that the rest of the team would ask her the same questions again and again and now wasn’t the time to press her more than that. She could see the tension in Frankie’s shoulders, in the way each of her muscles were stiffened. Under the bruises that coloured her skin, Susan could see the fine lines that pain and stress drew on her features. 

“Are you going to stay?” Her voice was almost childish as she turned her eyes toward the psychologist. 

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere, sweetie.” 

She sat back in the chair next to the bed as Frankie fell back into a sleep that would be more agitated than the previous ones.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I don't update often, I have really long shift at work and not that much time to write, but there it is...

She hadn’t said a word since she woke up an hour ago, which was  not surprising, considering the lethargic state she had been in the last few days. Susan had told the rest of the team that it was normal for Frankie to be quiet after the violence she suffered, but Will, especially, couldn’t help worrying about it  all the same. He had settled on the chair near the hospital bed, watching her in silence, not daring to rush her, despite the questions that burned his lips. He needed to know, to have explanations, someone to blame, but so far, all the questions asked have encountered a wall of silence. Frankie was reactive when the doctors asked her questions, when she was spoken to directly, and when she could answer in fewer than five words. He could sometimes catch a glimpse of a smile on his partner’s lips, but she never took part in the discussions. Her silence was worrisome to Will, so out of character, even her reactions to little things seemed uncomfortable and forced. It was hard for him to imagine that the woman who was watching the ceiling without moving was the same person as his life-loving partner. He naively believed that everything would become normal once back in a familiar environment. That she might  feel safer once she settled back in a comfortable routine of work in a city she knew.  However, Susan didn’t seem to share his optimism on the subject.

‘Frankie?’ 

Although his voice was soft and low, she visibly jumped at the sound of her name. Her green eyes turned to him, watching him with a new attention, as if she had just realized he was there. There was something in her eyes, a new ghost, different from the one he’d been able to glimpse from time-to-time in the past.

‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I don’t think closing yourself up is a good thing.’

She watched him, without saying anything, for several long seconds, as if it was taking her time to process his words. Will knew he was out of bounds, that he was pushing a little more than they had agreed to a few days earlier in that hotel room. Even in the absence of Jai and Susan, he could feel their disapproving looks on his back.

‘If you don’t want to talk to us, maybe you could talk to a professional? It could….’

‘Don’t.’

This was the first time she has opened her mouth since she woke up. Her tone was emphatic, although her voice sounded more fragile than Will had ever heard it before. She didn’t look at him anymore, staring at the wall in front of her, but even so, he could see a few tears in her eyes. Will was confused, not knowing what to do to ease the pain she felt or to find the right words to relieve her a little bit.

‘I’m just trying to help here…’

‘I don’t want your help.’

Even if she needed it. Even if she wanted to snuggle against him and cry as he held her. She didn’t have the words to describe what she felt, the distress that was growing in her. Frankie did what she always did; repress emotions to rebuild a shell even sturdier than before. She knew it was not a healthy thing, she knew it sends a damper over the past year with her team, a year that taught her to open up and care about others. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but return to her old, trusted, defence mechanisms.

‘You can try to push me as much as you want, it won’t work. I’ll not leave or stop worrying about you.’

‘You never give up, do you?’

‘Not when it comes to the people I love.’

She rolled her eyes, a typical Frankie gesture that brought him some comfort.

‘You’re annoying.’

He felt that little glimmer of hope in his chest, that fragile certainty that the Frankie he knew didn’t disappear. He couldn’t help but smile as he felt that the woman he knew and loved was back, even if it was a glimpse of that person. Yet it was a short moment, the annoyance in her partner’s eyes faded and she turned her faced away to look at the wall, wallowing in the silence again.

‘We are here for you, you know? No matter what you need.’

His words floated for a moment between them, without any reaction from her. He wondered if she had heard him, he was going to pronounce her name when she shrugged slowly.

‘I just want to go home.’ 

He nodded, pulling himself out of the chair he was sitting in, his back protesting at the movement.

“I’ll see what I can do. “

With that, he left the hospital room, leaving Frankie alone with her dark thoughts and the anxiety that closed on her as loneliness settled. If she knew that repelling her friends was not a good idea, the feeling of being dirty reinforced her need to get away from them so they didn’t get dirty, too. And that, right there, was the reason why she wanted to keep them at arm’s length for now.

She looked at the door a moment, to make sure Will was gone before letting a tear fall on her cheek.


End file.
